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How I Built a $5K a Month Side Project

campfirelabs.co

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Re: How I Built a $5K a Month Side Project

#231

Post by siruncledrew »

wilsonnb3 wrote: post #5

> Most people in the tech industry are brainwashed by Silicon Valley group think. These people believe that every business must have a billion dollar opportunity. If anything, I’d say that most people in the tech industry in Silicon Valley are brainwashed into thinking that entrepreneurship is the One True Path to salvation. Much like whoever wrote this article. Who else would recommend that someone follow the path t…

> Most people in the tech industry are brainwashed by Silicon Valley group think. These people believe that every business must have a billion dollar opportunity.

From past experience, part of the "brainwashing" is because the major VC firms have way less interest in pursuing ventures that net them less potential money. The VCs are out to make the best return possible for the members of their fund, and 5% of $1B is way more savory than 5% of $100M. Trying to get past a Seed or Series A with a market cap <$1B sucks when trying to get funding from VC firms.

Re: How I Built a $5K a Month Side Project

#232

Post by rchaud »

devdas wrote: post #192
pmarreck wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is the line between marketing and spamming?

Consent.

If the address on an email list was obtained via some other party that the address was voluntarily submitted to (say, a service with a ToS that included sharing your email address with "partners"), then consent was already established. Doesn't mean it isn't still shady.

Re: How I Built a $5K a Month Side Project

#233

Post by zorga »

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #222
dlkinney wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You're still speaking in terms of our current system being the product of some immutable natural law of the universe. That's because it is . Perhaps the prevailing mechanism of transfer (money) artificial, but what it represents is a fundamental law of nature. Money is simply a representation of time and/or energy and/or physical resources: all fundamentals of nature. > ...it's even more so [asinine] when you add t…

This is an example of a beginner approaching the topic of a post-scarcity economy. There's so much more to it than 'people producing wealth'. That's pretty much going away - almost all manufacturing is already automated, and the rest will soon be so. This puts us all between a rock and a hard place - most of us will be out of a job, and at the same time the factories are in the hands of the folks who built them. So l…

> There's so much more to it than 'people producing wealth'. That's pretty much going away - almost all manufacturing is already automated, and the rest will soon be so.

That's not going away, automation doesn't mean people aren't producing wealth, it just means said wealth is produced by fewer people but those robots belong to someone and its output is rightfully theirs. Just because a robot produced something doesn't mean everyone is entitled to it.

> This puts us all between a rock and a hard place - most of us will be out of a job, and at the same time the factories are in the hands of the folks who built them. So lots of goods available, and no market (few people have any money).

This is true.

> Clearly this is a different world than the 1800's free market system anticipated. So we'll have to change.

This is true as well, but that change isn't going to be moving away from capitalism and seizing the labor of the productive to give to the non productive for nothing. The productive will not stand for that and will simply stop producing for others which means no robots and no automation and everyone fending for themselves again. Automation drives down the cost of goods, less work will be require from people to obtain those goods, but those who produce must necessarily have incentive to do so or they won't, and that incentive is wealth and always will be.

Re: How I Built a $5K a Month Side Project

#234

Post by growt »

zrobotics wrote: post #228
drieddust wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed but how do you establish the relationship in the first place? Then only options I see is to a) hope google finds you interesting enough, b) paid advertising, or c) word of mouth. What are the other methods ? I am asking because I can't think of anything else.

Have you considered that this type of marketing is actually counterproductive? If a company spams me, and I notice it, it's guaranteed that I will avoid them like the plague, regardless of how good their service is. This is poisoning the well. It might get >5% of the people spammed interested, but what if the other 95%?

It doesn't work like that, for two reasons:

1) If the mail you receive actually interests you, you wouldn't classify it as "spamming" ("Did I really sign up for that? Anyway it sounds good"). If not you may avoid them in the future, but you would not have bought their product anyhow.

2) Scale: If a (real) spammer sends out 20 million emails and 0,0001% buy viagra. Thats fine for him. The other Emails cost him close to zero, so every sale it profit.

Re: How I Built a $5K a Month Side Project

#235

Post by beatgammit »

Skunkleton wrote: post #21
blakesterz wrote: post #6

> As a millennial there are few things that rank as desirable as finding a recurring source of income that doesn’t take much work That made me laugh! As someone much older I can honestly say that there are few things that rank as desirable as finding a recurring source of income that doesn’t take much work for me too.

As a millennial myself, I would like the need for income taken off the table so that I can find a recurring source of meaningful work.

If you find a reliable source of revenue that takes an insignificant amount of non meaningful work to maintain, you can spend the rest of you time on meaningful work.

Re: How I Built a $5K a Month Side Project

#236

Post by rchaud »

blakesterz wrote: post #6

> As a millennial there are few things that rank as desirable as finding a recurring source of income that doesn’t take much work That made me laugh! As someone much older I can honestly say that there are few things that rank as desirable as finding a recurring source of income that doesn’t take much work for me too.

I believe the author added the 'as a millennial' bit because everyone's feeds for the past couple of years have been bombarded by posts about 'digital nomads', the seemingly lucky few that are their own bosses and live out of a suitcase and a Macbook in exotic-seeming places like Slovakia, Argentina or Vietnam.

Re: How I Built a $5K a Month Side Project

#237

Post by rchaud »

blunte wrote: post #69

This is great and educational. But I've noticed that many (most?) of the successful side projects were started by people who had some sales and marketing experience. Sales first, tech second (or third). If you want other people to buy, rent, invest, etc., you have to be able to find the right people and communicate with them in a way that will lead them to become your customers/partners. Unfortunately, I doubt many o…

> Unfortunately, I doubt many of us with CompSci degrees and years/decades of experience have those sales and marketing skills.

The history of enterprise tech is strewn with stories about that first big deal happening before the tech was even ready. Bill Gates and Paul Allen's meeting with IBM is probably the best known one. Hell, even Steve Jobs, with all of Apple's power, publicly pitched a ghetto-rigged iPhone because a fully working version wasn't ready at the time.

The 'best' sales people I've met always, always exaggerate the benefits of something. In tech, the "Comp Sci" people are the ones building the product, so they are especially mindful about not overstating what their product can do. Psychologically, they are forever in a problem-solving mode, meaning that when they talk about the product, they are primed to talk about current bugs, or how far away it is from being 'feature complete'. Not the people you want extolling your virtues in a sales meeting.

Salespeople aren't as closely embedded within the product development process, which gives them the mental bandwidth to straight up lie about what the product can do. I've seen it numerous times; sales exec closes a big deal, then goes to the dev team and says "I need X, Y and Z to be added to this sprint because customer H wants to launch in a month."

Re: How I Built a $5K a Month Side Project

#238

Post by rchaud »

illumin8 wrote: post #84
derekp7 wrote: post #43

If you don't mind me asking, I'd like some help laying out what my next steps should be on one of my side projects. I had an idea for a side project, ran it by a hand full of friends and associates, expecting to have a bunch of holes poked into it (they have done that to me many times in the past). This time they all think I have something. Problem is I work full time, as a Linux systems engineer (30 years of Unix ex…

Honestly, as someone who has started a 5-6 figure monthly "side-hustle" in an area where there are many other players, and which requires learning new frontend skills, while I'm a crusty UNIX/Linux head, 30 years experience like you, I would say: just do it! Here is the thing I learned in 2018, in which I also generated >$700K of side income working 10-12 hours a week (mornings, evenings, and weekends): If you know h…

You were able to charge $1000 for the Airtable gig? If you don't mind my asking, was the client not aware of Upwork, Fiverr, etc, which I would imagine would be perfect for these one-off, low-engagement gigs?

Re: How I Built a $5K a Month Side Project

#239

Post by rchaud »

ForHackernews wrote: post #139

> found a virtual assistant on oDesk named Jonathan Am I correct in thinking this "virtual" assistant is not a bot, but just a human hired remotely?

That's exactly what it is. Freelancers working for relative pennies. Tim Ferriss started the bad habit of calling this 'automation' in the 4hr work week book.

Re: How I Built a $5K a Month Side Project

#240

Post by JoeAltmaier »

zorga wrote: post #233
JoeAltmaier wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is an example of a beginner approaching the topic of a post-scarcity economy. There's so much more to it than 'people producing wealth'. That's pretty much going away - almost all manufacturing is already automated, and the rest will soon be so. This puts us all between a rock and a hard place - most of us will be out of a job, and at the same time the factories are in the hands of the folks who built them. So l…

> There's so much more to it than 'people producing wealth'. That's pretty much going away - almost all manufacturing is already automated, and the rest will soon be so. That's not going away, automation doesn't mean people aren't producing wealth, it just means said wealth is produced by fewer people but those robots belong to someone and its output is rightfully theirs. Just because a robot produced something doesn…

Strawmen aren't helping here. "The labor of the productive" is becoming a very small set. Clearly they'll have to be motivated differently. Obviously the way forward isn't breaking the system with a hammer, so lets stop going back to that.

Incentive to live is different from incentive to work. Look at open source; look at researchers in universities. Wealth is not the motivator there, yet there's tremendous productivity coming from that.

The meaning of wealth is going to have to change.

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